A Smart Group is:
A mechanism in Bridge that allows for the use of imported user data to automate affiliation with a group as a means of (1) automating delivery of specific content to those learners and (2) reporting.
Learn more about automating enrollments through smart groups.
The key to all of this is what we call “layering” of content.
What do all learners need to know?
Then, what do specific regions or states or departments or job roles need to know?
The goal here is to do the most with less (i.e. all courses should be covered in the minimum amount of groups so that, as a learner may migrate across something like a state or department or job role, they are not getting double enrolled into content or potentially missing out on something that they need).
We often see it look something like this:
New Hires
The key here is to leverage your HRIS (if possible) to deliver a Y/N value for learners that join your company in that calendar year. Those with a “Y” value will go to the “New Hires” group and those with an “N” value will go to the “All Learners MINUS New Hires” group.
While Bridge does hold the hire_date value, smart groups do not currently allow to disclude a value for a group. So, if you make a group with the logic of “hire date is 1/1/22” and you affiliate content to that group, these learners will be considered new hires for the lifetime of Bridge, and the only way to get them out of this group would be to manually go in and repeatedly change the “is [date]” value in that smart group. You would also not be able to create an “All Learners MINUS New Hires” group because you would not be able to require inclusion of everyone but those in the “New Hire” smart group.
All Learners [minus New Hires]
If you are using a new hires group, it is likely for compliance and mandatory training that requires completion somewhere between 30-90 days of being onboarded to your company.
It is also then very likely that you need to deliver that same compliance training to your veteran employees in a set cadence (i.e. January is cybersecurity trainings, February is office safety trainings, etc.).
If you are leveraging the new hires group to deliver a specific program of content, then you’ll need to have an all learners group without the new hires in it to ensure that all employees are meeting company, state, and national standards every year. This group - in tandem with the new hire group - is one way to set up the various means of compliance training (we expand on that more here).
Manager Group
If you can bring in a “Y/N” value from your HRIS because you are leveraging auto CSV, that is the best and easiest way to make a manager group, which is very popular to expose different categories of content in the Learning Library.
Your HRIS likely has the ability to create this value in a field based on what is marked in the system. You CAN do this in Bridge; it just requires adding ALL the job titles that would potentially land in this “Y” value (i.e. marketing manager, sales manager, CEO, etc.). Needless to say, it’s a lot easier to mess up the latter (or miss a new manager title that comes in down the road).
At this time, a smart group of managers cannot be created by the manager role that is provisioned to users who are placed in the “manager UID” field to build out the hierarchy in Bridge.
If you are uploading a manager hierarchy into Bridge by assigning manager UIDs to every user, managers will automatically get their own independent smart groups. This will allow for managers to both author content and assign that content to only their direct reporting line.
If you do not want your managers to have these capabilities, you can toggle on to limit permissions for those managers in the account settings.
An admin will be able to see all the manager smart groups that have been created, and these will be unique as they will have initials as an icon with the first letter of the manager’s name and the letter “L” (i.e. “Stephanie Manager’s Learners” is “SL”).
Every manager, even an admin manager, will then have a group called “My Learners” (abbrevation icon of ML), which will include their entire reporting line (but will not include the manager themselves). An admin can search all manager groups with the appropriate filter:
Job Title
Aside from managers, it is very common to see mandatory training related to specific roles. For example, drivers at a fast food restaurant are not going to need the same training as cashiers working inside the restaurant; however, employees in both roles need specific certifications that they have the appropriate skills to do their jobs. The driver job title will likely have content that is specific to traffic laws and driver’s safety. The cashier will likely have content that is specific to money management and de-escalation skills.
This is a really perfect example where all employees would need a food safety training, so that content would be mandatory for the first layer of all employees, but then the job titles can have more granular trainings relevant to only those individuals in those roles.
Location
With remote work being the norm for very dispersed teams, it is quite common for different states to have different requirements, specifically for compliance training. By creating smart groups for location, you can ensure that you do not miss assigning those individuals living in those states with the appropriate content (i.e. New York and California are just two states that have much stricter rules for non-harassment training).
Department
Like those listed above, it is also very common to see department-specific training for credentialing and skill development. Those in sales hone different skills than someone working in a support role. As an organization, you may choose to expose this content in the Learning Library should employees want to re-skill and migrate horizontally in your company, but the smart groups allow for more strategic exposure of relevant and pressing content.
You can find a sample user upload file here.